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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Saturday, January 05, 2013

Truly and Royally Bucked

Chuck Hagel's selection by President Obama to be Secretary of Defense probably has nothing to do with Iran or Israel. We have civilian control of our military and it is not necessary to make sure you have "your" guy in charge to issue orders. No, I suspect that selecting the Republican Hagel has everything to do with an intent to gut our military and make sure that a Republican is seen as responsible for the effects.

"Several sources close to the process said have told The Cable that the White House and Hagel have been in touch on a regular basis and that Hagel is indeed the expected pick," Josh Rogin reported, saying the announcement could come as soon as Monday.

A man who voted to lose the Iraq War in the summer of 2007 is no man to run the Department of Defense. His vote was both a betrayal of those who fought and died in a legally authorized war and a failure to see the trends of battlefield victory that were accumulating as the surge was begun.

Hagel brings nothing but bad judgment about fighting wars--the ultimate job of the department he would head. So why choose him?

Not to screw over Israel or appease Iran. Those would be John Kerry's jobs. No, Hagel brings one quality that the president values:

Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, served as a Republican U.S. senator in Nebraska from 1997 to 2009 and earned a reputation for bucking his party.

President Obama wants someone willing to buck his own party good and hard on defense.

Hagel will carry out orders to gut the Pentagon and will have that coveted "R" after his name to make sure the blame is properly cast away from the president and his party.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!